Open it and see what's inside…

Episode 140215

So I’ve just finished Prince Lestat, the latest installation of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. I’m new to this ancient fandom and so far I’ve made it to the third book Queen of Damned. Technically I should follow the chronical order and begin reading the fourth book; but all the talks and reviews and spoilers about the new book stirred my curiosity rather terribly – reserved that I am, I sometimes want to join the talk instead of feeling left out – and before I know any better, I’ve picked up the book.

Like the third book, this one is brimmed with new characters and subplots and it’s quite challenging just to remember the names, let alone the little plot that follows each of them. So far my favorite is Antoine “the musician” for reasons I’ve already stated on my Facebook so I don’t feel like repeating myself. His subplot is inspiring, to say the least, and his optimism and yearnings and loneliness as perhaps the vampire with a terrible luck add a bitter-sweet taste to the story as a whole. But as always, once he melts into the bunch, he becomes a little more than a Lestat’s worshipper who is blessed to be in the Prince’s choir and that’s it. I did expect more than just a few words exchanged between Antoine and Lestat and Lestat’s promises that they have “many other nights” later. After all, it’s Antoine who stayed with Lestat at his worst, Antoine who got the Dark Gift in a less-than-graceful manner, Antoine who still loves and longs to see Lestat after a century of separation.

Antoine deserves more, really.

There’s much to say about this book, its ups and downs, of course. But I’ll be spoiling the whole story if I write them all down, which I tend to do in my amateur reviews of movies and books, and this is not a review of any sorts, just a little diary entry where I vent out some emotions after finishing. And so here I lament the loss of the Brat Prince Lestat whom we readers have come to love and adore. Perhaps after ten years of Lestat’s absence (Blood Canticle is believed by many to be his last adventure), Anne feels that in this coming-back, Lestat should change. Gone was the Brat Prince that was impulsive, emotional and at times irresponsible; Lestat is The Prince now and he takes responsibilities of uniting and leading the tribe. I’m not gonna judge whether this significant change is good or bad (to us readers, not to the vampire tribe); it’s just… sad. I know it’s impossible for a person to be immune to changes and as the author changes, her characters change with her. Yet why do I (and some other readers) lament the gone of the Brat Prince? Perhaps it’s because we’ve so gotten used to the character’s personality, his trademark brattiness, impulsiveness that we’re less than open to his changes? Now this something I’ve witnessed over the years of writing fanfiction: us fanfic writers mostly try to stick to the canonical traits of the characters we borrow from the canon, that is, we’re praised as ‘good’ if we manage to keep the characters ‘in character’, and if we somehow how change the characters, we fall right into a case of OOCness (out-of-character-ness) and hence, are often shunned by our little community of readers. Well, I’m pretty convinced that the human nature is rather fluctuating, that we ourselves can act out-of-character at anytime. So the question is, why do readers feel saddened (as I am now), sometimes cheated, disappointed, scarcely insulted and enraged when our beloved characters do not behave, let’s say, the way we want them to behave? Is it our egotism that compels us to feel and act as if we have the control over the characters (and sometimes we are tempted to think so)? But the characters are the author’s sole property and if she intends for them to change then, I guess, “the likes of us abide”, to quote Abba. Don’t like it? Go write your own story and maybe you end up hearing the same thing from your readers too, provided that you can get them to read your story.